


A Wonder in Human Form

by Intent_To_Stay



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Dorks in Love, F/M, Horrorterrors - Freeform, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Minor Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9950201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intent_To_Stay/pseuds/Intent_To_Stay
Summary: Anakin Skywalker is a child of the force.How could he be anything other than monstrous and terrifying?





	1. Bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> AU by peradi in which the Force is a Lovecraftian-like cosmic entity and its children are just as terrifying.

Anakin is used to pulling his entire self under a blanket of void. The council flinches when he doesn’t, the masters grimace, the padawans shrink back, and the youngest of younglings merely start screaming. The jedi temple is synonymous with hiding, but Anakin has gotten so good at smothering his limbs, his wings, at drowning his light and blood in a void that he can do it almost instantly.

He doesn’t do the same on missions. On missions, he lets thrones pierce though the rotting second skin he has wrapped himself in and he tears it to shreds. The clone troopers see things, and at first it terrifies them. But soon after so many missions where Anakin’s shadows flare and his arms extend (all fourteen of them, furred and then scaled and then not even flesh, just fire and smoke and ink) seconds before he leaps forward with a burning blue blade and slaughters all the non-sentient clankers in his path, they realize they have nothing to fear. This is their general, and he is nothing if not selfish and possessive and bigger than the stars that the ground they stand on orbits.

(it always terrifies them, always ignites a little primal ache of terror, but they do not fear it, not like they really should)

During one of the small lulls in fighting and death, in the void of hyperspace transport, Anakin sits next to Obi-wan and feels his skin try to tear itself apart.

Obi-wan’s eyes are closed, (they usually are, it’s the only safe way for Anakin to exist, out of sight) and Anakin says in the smallest of most human voices, “I don’t want to go back.”

Obi-wan is breathing smoke and oil, (Anakin’s fear and doubt has saturated every world) but he murmurs, “The council needs us to do so.”

“You could go without me,” Anakin pleads. “They won’t let us rest long, you know this, just let me stay in space.”

Obi-wan doesn’t dare open his eyes. He feels blood dripping down his face, hears the soft brush of little bird wings crumpling in fear, tastes the sun hot in his throat and the moon cold in his chest. This is normal. It’s all phantom and there-not-there in between hear beats. Anakin’s arms, his claws are ghosting over every nerve, wandering and incontrollable, and he feels liquid metal trail after every touch.

 Obi-wan is the only person in the order who can stand it, who can stand being around Anakin-unbound. “What about Senator Amidala? She has a role in this next mission,” Obi-wan says and he remains meditation-still even as feathers, no fingertips, trace over the side of his face and his flesh creeps.

“She can’t see me like this,” Anakin whispers, and it comes from three throats. “Obi-wan, I’ll implode. I’ll rot. I can’t, not right now.”

icanthide

The thought is a whisper in Obi-wan’s head. Obi-wan finally moves, he turns blindly to where Anakin has sat sprawled out next to him. His hand passes through stardust and fire before it touches skin. “Let me see,” he says, and before Anakin can flinch away, before he can draw himself into something human, Obi-wan forces his eyes open.

It’s like looking into a sun after being blind. Everything is gold, is burning, is white like a lightsaber shoved through the eyes.

Well, not everything. There are patches of rot, of phantom scratches and open wounds spilling out agony. Anakin’s eyes are blue and on fire and there are thousands of them, but Obi-wan focuses on the human ones, which are leaking tears.

He shudders and drops like a puppet with his strings cut. Anakin cries out in alarm, and catches him before he can slam into the floor. Obi-wan opens his eyes, but it doesn’t really make a difference. Everything is dark and dim and muted, and his eye sockets feel like they’re leaking ink.

Anakin is saying things, but they’re garbled and in tongues that don’t quite translate. He has Obi-wan’s head in his lap and wipes at his eyes. Slowly, Obi-wan begins to feel his skin again and his eyes gain back their sight.

Anakin’s face, his human face, is above him and it is flushed and sobbing. “Why, why, why did you do that?”

Obi-wan tilts his head and squints his eyes and he reaches up and lays his hand against Anakin’s cheek. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers. “And I won’t ask you to hide.”

Anakin’s face screws up and he looks so young, so tired, so worn thin. Obi-wan threads his fingers through Anakin’s hair and tugs him down. Anakin turns his face away, refuses to look at him, but he doesn’t pull away. Obi-wan brushes his lips over Anakin’s forehead and breathes, “Don’t be sorry.”

Anakin’s hands clench, he is white knuckled and drowning in his own fears. Obi-wan tilts his head up just a bit higher and rests his forehead against his, and he feels something like dark matter drip into his mouth.

 

* * *

 

Later, when they are both lying still (not sleeping never sleeping,) Obi-wan says, “You can’t suffocate yourself.”

Anakin shifts, and the wings that surround them shudder and melt into a rolling storm cloud. “But everyone thinks that I should.”

Obi-wan shrugs. “I don’t.”

 

* * *

 

When their ship touches down on Coruscant, the weather control facilities go hay wire. Anakin steps out and onto the ground in time with Obi-wan, and his shadow trails out behind him and it holds little bits of fire and ash. When the two report to the council, they are burning in their seats, every muscle tensed. Obi-wan stands beside Anakin and feels limbs like snakes twining up and down around him, and he lets it wash over him like a pain you can’t avoid. ‘

The secret is to not fight it. It will never make sense, so do not expect it to. It will never feel safe or right, so do not ask for it to be so. You can’t make something like the force be gentle. Anakin is like a star, mesmerizing and terrifying with a gravitational draw that will drown you if you do not fear, but that is fine because everyone fears.

The trick, Obi-wan knows, to not going insane when looking at Anakin Skywalker is to already be mad.


	2. Things We Accept

Hiding is weird to explain.

It’s like having a scab, except the scab is your skin—you are just scar tissue holding your form over, and its like drowning in oil and deep frying in the sun all at once. It’s the fact that tearing open that scab and slipping out is painful, like shedding skin a few layers too deep.

It’s that everyone prefers you this way. They want you to be something that you fundamentally aren’t.

Sometimes, when Padme kisses Anakin, he feels despair. He loves her, he loves her enough that he never stops hiding, even when it feels easier to breathe toxic water. She’s bright and small in his arms and her kisses are slow and deep. He is so in love that the sight of her is painful, a lump in the back of his throat, a constant nagging worry that she might _see_ him.

He pulls away. “Wait,” he says, breathless and almost trembling.

Padme stops immediately, separates and gives him space. She leaves her hand open on the bed as an invitation, but Anakin can’t take it no matter how he wants to. Her eyes are concerned, worried, a little bit like the night sky when it seems bright enough to touch. “What’s wrong?”

Obi-wan, in all his blind-madness haze, made Anakin want her to understand. So he says, “Will you close your eyes?” It comes out cracked and a little desperate, but Padme simply nods and shuts her eyes. “No matter what,” Anakin says, “don’t open them.”

And then he sheds his rotdeepemptyspaceprison and his wings are the first thing to form, thousands of them melting and reforming in the space of seconds, feathers sprouting eyes and teeth and weeping blood. They drip down the air, pulling at Padme’s skin like the tug of spider webs and nebulae.

Padme stiffens a little, but she keeps her eyes shut.

The air around him hums and it whispers senseless little words,

_fire is your blood my promised my prodigal—spill it and it will burn—_

_might by this power, the suns weep before them—_

_you will drink the stars and the void, oh, holy wicked as you are—_

Padme is scared. He sees it. She’s pale, shuddering, her heartbeat something Anakin can feel through the air. He bites his lip and feels all the terror in his form bubble into something awful and his wings molt into a shell, into stone, into thrones that tear open the edges of reality.

When she reaches for his hand, he freezes. Everything shrinks. He is occupying one space, and that feeling is alien. She buries her face into the crook of his neck and fists her hands into the back of his robes. “What is this?” Her voice is steady, even like the type face of senate proclamations. He still can feel her racing pulse.

“It’s me.”

She pulls back and opens her eyes, and Anakin flinches, but Padme just reaches up and skims her hand over his cheek. Anakin can’t breathe when she looks into his eyes. She gazes at him, her eyes rolling and turning like the waves, a little fear, a lot of concern, and so much of something he doesn’t have a name for.

She threads her fingers through his hair and guides him into a kiss. He falls into it. That’s what it feels like; free-falling through the air into something expressively forbidden. It shouldn’t feel so safe. It shouldn’t feel like home.

"I love you," She breathes against his lips.

"Are you sure?" He wants her to say yes, but he wants it to also be true. He's shaking, flowers blooming and withering up and down his spine, star dust misting his breath, his chest filling with rolling storm clouds, too many _teeth_ , and he's monsterous, ugly, _horri_ —

Padme tilts her head up and kisses him, her hand still resting on the crown of his skull. "Yes."

They close their eyes, but Anakin is _glowing_ and it flares blood-gold behind their eyelids.

* * *

 

Negotiations go a lot faster in the future whenever Anakin is around.

When Senator Amidala sits at a table with her jedi escort standing behind her, people trip over themselves to agree. Amidala is stone and stars, cold and brilliant and her words ring with eternity. Skywalker is fire and rolling thunder clouds, and when things don’t go according to plan, every shadow in the room twists and hisses.

They are terrifying. It’s the only description for it, even if they both deny it.

Amidala’s singing determination and razor intellect. Skywalker’s burning stare and ominous presence. They are a political delegation’s nightmares.

“You made Senator Ibrek cry,” Padme says as they exit the committee chamber. She tries to sound disapproving, but Anakin can see the way her lips twitch into a smile.

“That was all you, my lady,” Anakin says. “I was napping most of that session.”

Padme glances towards him. “Your eyes were open and you were standing.”

Anakin grins. “You’d be amazed what years in the Jedi temple teach you; some instructors can be incredibly boring.”

Padme laughs and she shakes her head. “I suppose a nap might be in order.” It’s offered as an off-hand comment, but Anakin knows it’s a question.

“I suppose one might, my lady.”

* * *

 

Later, the two of them wake up with horrible bed head. Anakin’s been missing from the temple for three hours, and Padme bats his com off the bedside table when it chirps. Anakin tries to sit up, but Padme shakes her head and throws her arm over his chest possessively.

“They can wait,” she murmurs, her eyes still closed.

_Unspoken: “Stay. You’re mine. I love you.”_

Anakin settles back down and rests an arm over her back. “They can wait,” he agrees.

_Unspoken: “Anything. I’m yours. I know.”_

They fall asleep in a tangle of wings and sheets and metaphysical whisperings.

Senator Amidala and Master Skywalker are terrifying. There is no other word for it.

They also happen to be hopelessly, helplessly in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh so yea i have no idea when ill update again, but if i get a big response ill add more and maybe include some semblance of a plot 
> 
> oh and go follow me on tumblr @goshersss bc i post art and cool stuff


	3. Songbird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1, starring Ahsoka Tano  
> references episode 2.06 of the clone wars

In this world, like any other, the war is too harsh and jedi die too quickly and generals are trained young. In this world Ahsoka Tano is warned about her master:

_“Look too closely, you should not.”_

She follows that order at first. She isn’t afraid; that’s why she was chosen, after all. (Indeed, she is a hero with no fear in her own right.) She snarks and snips and snipes and catches his eye and refuses to look away.

When he looks down at her when they first meet, she bears her teeth, predator-sharp. That’s the first time she sees something of herself reflected. When he raises an eyebrow and opens his mouth to say something cutting and dismissive, she _sees_ too many teeth. Too many to ever conceivably fit inside his mouth and they are all sharp and deadly.

She flinches back, her hackles on end, but she isn’t _afraid._ She sees a predator much bigger than herself and despite all the warnings echoing in her ears, she wants to get closer. Like a moth to flame. Like raptor wanting to fly within a thundercloud.

Because in this world, like in any other, Ahsoka Tano is angry. She’s much too proud and passionate to ever be a good Jedi. If it weren’t for the war, she wouldn’t have ever become a padawan. She knows this. It weighs on the back of her mind. Why would they give her such a notorious—dangerous—Jedi for a master if not because she was expendable?

In this world, Ahsoka Tano looks at her mission and master and sees the horrifying things just out of sight behind the heat waves of his very being and she draws closer. In this world, she weathers Skywalker’s disappointment and annoyance and presence because she will not back down. In this world, as she watches her master move and warp reality without a thought, and she steps closer because she _wants_ to be dangerous.

“Hmm,” Skywalker says, thorns and snakes winding around his crown, around his neck, pride a twin sun halo behind him. “You’re pretty snippy to your master. In my day, we showed respect to our elders.”

Master Kenobi turns away to cough. He’s too professional to smile.

Ahsoka tilts her head back and _looks_ and if she is afraid, she doesn’t recognize the feeling. “I’m sure in your day, your elders were able to command respect, Skyguy.”

Skywalker smiles, his eyes lighting up. Every single one. Ahsoka feels something like feathers and gravity rain over her skin, and it hurts a little, terrifies a little, but mostly she just feels shock and a draw like a riptide. The force is whispering clearly in her ear; _this one is yours._  

“You got me there, Snips.”

 

Barriss Offree is the perfect senior padawan. At first, Ahsoka is envious. Her own master places so little trust in her. It rankles. He’s overbearing, his wings always spread wide, always tilting the direction of blaster fire by a few definite degrees, always forcing her out of harm’s way even when she could do it without his help. He’s a control freak, always demanding, always needing an update, a sit-rep.

Luminara is the opposite. She trusts her padawan. She gives her important duties and doesn’t need to constantly check up on her charge. She and Barriss work well together, their relationship so much more smooth and simple than whatever scrap and scrabble her and Skyguy constantly have going on.

Before she blows up the factory, she wishes she had argued a bit less and left on better terms.

When she can put all her thoughts straight again, Ahsoka is lying against metal controls and her neck hurts. She also can’t see. She groans and ignites her saber, careful not to puncture anything.

Barriss blinks awake across from her, her blue eyes vivid in the dark. Like the sky just at sunrise, almost. Perhaps even prettier. Ahsoka jerks her head away when she realizes that she’s staring. “We, um, need to contact the surface,” she says, her tongue tripping over itself.

Barriss’ eyes light up in understanding. She looks at her wrist before frowning. “My com’s broken.”

Ahsoka checks her own. “Same.” She sighs and holds out her saber. "Hold the light?” Barriss takes it and ignites her own blade. Ahsoka squirms her way out of the most constricted spaces and looks around. Environmental control unit. Bingo. “My master taught me a trick or two about coms,” she explains.” She pries the panel open with her nails and begins the laborious process of rewiring her com to boost the frequency.

“Your master,” Barriss says quietly, her voice trailing off. Ahsoka looks over from her mess of wires and charred communication devices. Even in the green-blue light of their sabers, Ahsoka can see how deeply Barriss is considering her words. There’s a cut above her eye dripping blood down the long planes of her dusty face.

Ahsoka jerks as the wires spark beneath her fingertips. “What about him?”

“He’s very—“

“Controlling?” Ahsoka mutters, not with any real bite, jabbing at the wires with more force. “Untrusting? Overbearing?” The com shakes and shudders, but doesn’t come to life.

“Protective.”

Ahsoka stops and looks up from her work. Barriss’ bright eyes are peering out from the dark, and they look so _sad_. She looks away.

“I—I know it’s unbecoming, but I wish my Master—“ She shakes her head and goes silent.

Ahsoka gets why. Wish is one of those funny words for Jedi, because it doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in basic. Wish means want. And Jedi are not supposed to want.  

Ahsoka Tano much too proud and passionate to ever be a good Jedi.

“I want him to stop treating me like a youngling.”

The lightsaber in Barriss’ hand wobbles a bit. She opens her mouth and then closes it. Looks away. “I want her to—“ And then she shakes her head again. Barriss is a good jedi. Jedi do not want. “It doesn’t matter. We destroyed the factory. We’ve saved countless lives. It doesn’t matter what happens now.”

Ahsoka wants to hear what Barriss wants, but the com sparks and splutters to life and she doesn't have time to push. So instead, she grins and announces, “Well, I’m about to save two more.”

* * *

 

Anakin is molting and going insane. Despite having so many eyes, he can’t find his padawan, not buried under rubble and the thousand moth-wing after flickers of dead Geonosians. The air is thick with dust and the tragedy of death and the visceral satisfaction of clone troopers and he can’t see through it. It’s like static wrapping around his ears, and he can’t help the way he paces over the wreckage, his human eyes looking for the slightest flicker of motion that isn’t flames. “We cannot give up on our padawans,” He argues.

Luminara brushes aside his frantic worry with a blank face and perfect jedi words. “You misjudge me. I too care about my apprentice. But, if their time has come…”

Anakin barely restrains himself from snarling. “I refuse to let Ahsoka die. She _will_ find a way out.”

If my padawan has perished,” she says, “I will mourn her. But I will celebrate her as well through her memory.”

“Well I still plan on celebrating with my padawan,” Anakin bites out. “In person.”

Luminara stares at him, eyes always somber and reserved, and he feels her judgement. Too passionate, too attached. He feels it, and he doesn’t care. Perhaps she is cold enough to not feel worry, to not want, but Anakin isn’t.

Because in this world, like in any other, Anakin Skywalker is not a good jedi.

When his brilliant padawan punches through the com channels, he sprints, following the digital static airwaves like a blood hound, faster than even a droid could triangulate. It brushes against him like the slightest breath of wind, and it’s all he needs to find her. The tap-code is a simple, sluggish SOS. “Hang in there, Snips,” He murmurs.

He scans the wreckage, blood seeping over the stones and through the cracks, until he finds it. Ahsoka is alive, shes sun-bright and nimble like raptor wings, and she is _alive._

“I’ll move the heavy machinery over, sir,” Rex says.

Anakin shakes his head. “No time.” He raises his hands and he forces gravity to bow to his will. Luminara is beside him, calmly urging the universe to tilt for her, the proper Jedi way.

Anakin screams and snarls and rips it open and beats it into submission. It’s not the right way. It’s not the proper way. It’s the way that makes Luminara flinch and the sun dim and the winds change direction. It’s the way that works.

His padawan crawls out of the wreckage, dusty and concussed and with legs that aren’t quite up for the task. His relief practically drowns him. “I knew they were still alive.” He swallows back the lump in his throat and throws a glance over his shoulder at Luminara. “I told you we shouldn’t give up on them.”

“It’s not that I gave up, Skywalker,” Luminara murmurs back, “but unlike you, when the time comes, I am prepared to let my student go.” She tilts her head. “Can you say the same?”

Anakin really can’t. He doesn’t the see the problem with that. He turns away and helps his padawan scale the last ledge.

Ahsoka looks up—she’s still so short, so young—and she grins. “I knew you’d come looking for me,” she say, her voice warm and her eyes happy, and Anakin is overwhelmed by how _proud_ he is. Proud of her, his brilliant, jagged, snippy, imperfect padawan.

“I never doubted you for a second.”

He doesn’t hug her. Jedi don’t hug. But he does hold her arm and squeeze her palm and his and wrap the two of them in millions of wings that soothe like the night desert wind. His padawan, laughs and squeezes back.

And things go on.

 

* * *

 

In this world, Ahsoka never gets to hear what Barriss couldn’t say. What she wished for, what she wanted, even though the jedi are not supposed to want.

In this world, Barriss couldn’t say the words furiously running through her head. They are forever trapped under her skin, and they fester. The words in question?

“I want my master to care half as much as yours does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> andddd its back by popular demand! I honsetly didn't have much of an idea for what to do and then some things occured to me and i knew I had to write them. part two is coming up next, but idk when it will be out bc im juggling so many WIPs at this point lol but im all for democracy, so if yall want more let me know. This seemed like a good spot to end bc i din't want to leave any one hanging for too long, but trust me part 2 will probably be double the word length. feel free to bother me at goshersss if you want to talk!


	4. Raptor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> incidentally, this AU is the only one in which i appreciate Mortis

Things change after mortis. How could they not?

Because Ahsoka died.

She died, she left, and the force was content to let it stay that way.

Well.

Most of the force.

Anakin did not agree. He tore the universe open with his many arms, smothered it with clouds of oil and rivers of lightning, incinerated it with fire brighter than his eyes. He spoke with a thousand throats and flew with a million wings and he did the impossible.

He brought her back.

And it was a miracle. An ancient life freely given to save one just beginning.

Ahsoka didn’t remember it. Dying. She just remembered the burning poison of hate in her veins and the sick feeling of desperation in her head. And then she fell. She remembers nothing after that; Anakin refuses to tell her what happened.

But she gets flashes of it in her dreams.

Static. Void. Nothing.

And then fire. Burning light. Feathers with edges that make the stars bleed.

Claws snatching her back. Ripping her dissolving form from the fabric of the universe. And she’s incomplete. There are chunks missing, things she needs, things that were needed to stay whole. She’s a bird without wings, without body. She should have so much more, but it’s lost like blood in a river.

And despite her master’s rage and fear, his thousand wings and needle teeth and razor claws cannot keep her whole. She slips through his fingers, just out of reach, fraying at every seam.

It’s peaceful.

It’s terrifying.

It’s something that should feel wrong, but Ahsoka can’t feel anything. She is nothing, has nothing to feel. She is dying, and like a teaspoon of salt poured into the ocean, she will disappear.

(There is no death. There is only the force.)

(The Jedi forget that the force is death.)

And then something crushes her. Something bright and harsh, cauterizing her open wounds, pulling the little floating ions of her soul in like the gravity of a black hole. Pressure. Blank focus, concentration, willingness to exist.

Her broken being is low grade carbon, and her master buries her in molten diamond and the heart of something as old as the stars, and envelopes her in wings that crush and sink into her skin until there is no difference between her the searing light of _protectbreathelivelivelive_. His tears are blood, his fear fire, his desperation gravity itself. She is drowned in the force, forged by the pressure of an ocean as deep as the galaxy, seared together by a blaze hotter than the most searing sun.

When Ahsoka Tano returns to life, she is an ugly horrifying _something_ , a mortal hunk of scar tissue with divinity peeking out from behind her eyes, with wings broken and bloody, with stardust circulating in her veins, with the blood of the galaxy creeping up from her lungs and twisting amongst her words and dripping from her lips.

And then she is herself.

* * *

 

Here’s something interesting. What is infinity minus two?

Infinity, but a little less.

Another question. Can you miss something that exists only in transience? Can you feel the absence of something that doesn’t truly exist?

Anakin Skywalker knows the answer is yes and yes.

He can’t help but watch Ahsoka. She hasn’t noticed yet. She walks around for weeks blind to what she has become. She doesn’t notice how her eyes are flame when she angers or how her shadow turns to blood when she’s afraid. She doesn’t notice the wings that trail behind her, the tips of the feathers slicing open the ground she walks upon and letting light bubble up. She doesn’t notice how they spread when she is charging into a firefight, how they encircle those she cares about.

But Anakin can see them, because unlike everything else, they never leave.

They are blinding—the white of steel on the edge of vaporizing. And they are hers. His wings are blood and gold and shadow and blade. Hers are just as sharp, just as bright, just as proud and protective, but they are hers now and Anakin can never have them back.

He never stops knowing the honorcursehorror he’s bestowed upon his apprentice. The wounds on his back never close. They weep salt and ink and the words of a language no longer spoken. He has just as many wings as before—infinity minus two. Those two wings are the only real ones, the only permanent fixture in this world, the only part of him that _matters_. They are the thing that pins her to reality, a vice just above and just below that keeps her body from dissolving into a plane where no one can reach.

Anakin drowns in his guilt.

He didn’t understand Luminara before. He didn’t understand letting go. He was willing to do anything to keep his apprentice.

He succeeded. He ruined her. He shoved his apprentice into a furnace and bound her to something eternal.

It’s repulsive.

Anakin shouldn’t exist. Not on the human plane—and yet he does. He’s terrifying and inexplicable and wrong, but he’s something pure; inhuman but _natural_.

Ahsoka is stitched and welded together, mortal made unholy-unwhole-divine. Anakin made something even more horrifying than himself, and he did it because he wanted to. Because he needed to. Because he couldn’t let go.

It takes weeks for Ahsoka to realize why her master won’t look her in the eye. Why the world feels different. Why she feels the same, even as everyone stares just a little too long at the space above her head.

“On Mortis,” she says one day after another training session where Anakin can’t bring himself to push, “I died, didn’t I?” She’s perched on a crate in the hanger, turning her lightsaber over and over between her palms. Her voice is casual, but her wings are shaking and shuddering and wilting, and her shadow is trying to swallow her whole.

Anakin can’t bear to look her in the eye. He can’t bear to lie. “Yes.”

“And you brought me back.”

Anakin feels the weight of her stare on his bowed head. “Ahsoka,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asks. It isn’t gentle. It’s a challenge. Her head is held high and her eyes are sharp and she isn’t the least bit gentle.

“Because I changed you. I ruined you.”

_I made you like me._

“I,” Ahsoka snarls, her voice trembling with fury, “am not _ruined_.” She leaps down from her perch, her shoulders set and her lip curling in anger. The inferno in her eyes is too familiar, too similar. “I am _not_ broken!”

Anakin sees the scar tissue that glows like lattice-work over her skin, like capillaries of glinting star light, the after image of feathers stitching her soul together. High mountains of damage mark where his wings burned themselves into her small frame. Blood stains her teeth, liquid flame leaks from her eyes, and her shadow is smoke turned sentient—

She’s like him. How could she be anything other than broken?

He waits for her to scream at him. To hate him. Because she can’t go _back_. She’s stuck being something she shouldn’t be because Anakin couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop thinking of his own selfishness when faced with the thought of his student dying.

She steps forward and reaches through the static and storm, and her hands are taloned like the claws of a bird of prey, grabbing his wrists. Her wings flare up and out and out, ill-fitting and _hers_ , but not really, and he waits for them to burn, waits for her to tear at him in a way that now only she could.

Like destroys like. He would let her do it. He would do anything to make up for what he did.

“I’m alive,” She proclaims, there are feather’s pressing at his back, draping over his crown, and they don’t burn with anything except absolution. “And I’m perfect as I am.”

But no matter how much he wishes to, Anakin can’t accept that forgiveness.

He doesn’t deserve it.

* * *

 

 “What do you see when you look at me?” She asks Master Obi-wan.

He glances up from his holo-pad casualty list, his expression calm except for the dullness of his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“What do I look like?” Ahsoka demanded.

“Hmm.” Obi-wan examines her for a moment. “Young togruta female, approximately 5’3”, umber skin and blue lekku,” he reports. Ahsoka gives him a flat stare, and he cracks a smile. “You should be more specific, young one.”

“I know about Mortis,” Ahsoka says.

Obi-wan’s mouth twists into something not quite a frown, but it isn’t happy. “Did Anakin tell you?”

“No. I remember. Bits and pieces, at least.” Flashes of things that don’t make sense. She occasionally jolts awake in the dead of night, because she is burning, she is dying, and she is _drowning_. “So what do I look like? I know there’s something,” she murmurs, and she recalls all the times her Master looked away from her and refused to meet her eye. “Do I look like him?”

Obi-wan tilts his head. “Yes and no. There are similarities, but you are very different from Anakin.”

“How?”

Obi-wan runs a hand over his beard and seems to consider the question. “There’s less of you—but you’re more visible. You know that it’s difficult to describe.”

“Please try,” Ahsoka pleads. “He won’t talk to me about it. He acts as if I’m something _wrong_. I need to know.”

Obi-wan considers her: Shadow leaking blood, wings wrapped tight, phantom gaps in her flesh that glint like glass and starlight. “You’re more…stable. Less likely to shift and change. You’re fixed, somehow. A little bit like him, but you are mostly yourself.”

Ahsoka relaxes. “So I’m fine?”

“Young one, you are certainly more than fine,” Obi-wan assures. “You are alive. That is a great deal better than being dead.”

“They why does master act so—so horrified?” Ahsoka wonders. “He’s disgusted. It’s like he ashamed of me.” He refuses to return to Coruscant. He’s subtle about it, but he’s found a mountain of reasons to keep to the front line, to avoid other Jedi, to not let Ahsoka out of his sight. Even when he can’t look at her.

Obi-wan hums. “I think in this particular instance, that Anakin’s reaction says less about you and more about himself.”

Ahsoka bite her lip and nods and leaves to think over what that means.

OOOO

It happens sooner than later.

“Skywalker, you’ve been requested by the chancellor himself. If you refuse to return to Coruscant, you _will_ be labeled AWOL.”

Anakin grits his jaw and argues, “We are making progress with the siege. If we leave now, I can’t ensure a victory.”

“Send a replacement, we will,” Yoda assures. “But come in, you and your padawan must.”

“I could leave the troops to Ahsoka, and she can hold over the siege until—“

“Skywalker,” Mace cuts in, his voice uncompromising, his expression grim. “You _and_ your padawan will depart immediately for Coruscant. That is an order.”

Anakin swells like an ocean, malcontent stirring under his skin before he slumps. “I understand,” he mutters. His lungs are oil and teeth, his skin growing scales, his hands melting into wax.

“Good.”

The transmission cuts out, leaving Anakin in the dim emergency communications tent. “I know you’re listening, Snips.”

Ahsoka lifts the flap of the tent and steps inside. “I’ll tell Rex.”

Her master stares at her for a moment, and Ahsoka sees blood blooming from under his tunics, and then she blinks and it is gone.

“Okay.”

 

They avoid each other on the hyperspace flight. Ahsoka sits in the cockpit and watches infinity stream by. It used to hurt her eyes, to make her feel sick. Now is just feels like home. She’s been in hyperspace so often, fliting from one battle front to another, that she finds it relaxing. A reprieve.

A reminder. Drowning, dying, living. It makes her feel hollow, a bit like she used to be.

Not so bright. Not so centered. Not so eternal.

She tries to see herself again, tries to glimpse herself in reflections, to comprehend the phantom weight that shits upon her shoulders and whisper against the ground, but it is a lost cause. Whatever it is that her Master sees when he looks at her, Ahsoka can’t see it. Maybe it’s for the best.

A few minutes before the ship is set to leave hyperspace, Anakin returns to the cockpit. He lingers in the doorway, storm clouds rolling around his head like a halo and shadow twisted around his throat. “The council,” He says slowly, “is going to have questions.”

“It’s a good thing we have answers, then.” She tries to catch his eye, but Anakin is staring a hole into hyperspace.

“They won’t like it. I’ll do the talking, but you—“ He waves his hands, searching for an answer. “You need to tone it down.”

“How?” She isn’t offended—well, she is, but she’s glad that he’s actually acknowledging what happened, so she’ll just stow it and—

“Uh, you see,” her Master mutters, running a hand through his tangled hair, “It’s like imagining a cloud. Or a suit of armor. You just need to wrap yourself in something so they can’t see.”

Ahsoka stares at him. “Skyguy, that makes no sense.”

Anakin frowns. “I guess you’ve never seen me hide—I stopped before I met you.” His mouth twists unpleasantly, and he takes a deep breath. “I guess I’ll have to show you.” He looks to the floor and then Ahsoka feels her stomach rupture.

It’s like he’s peeling open the void of the universe and layering it over his skin. It’s like he’s shoving stone down his throat and chaining down his wings and gouging out his eyes. It’s like he’s slicing his chest open, but instead of blood coming out, arms and teeth and fire and smoke billow in and swarm and then it all dims, locked behind iron and static and nothing.

And standing there is Anakin, completely normal, except he’s buried alive and drowning.

“Stop!” Ahsoka yells, her heart slamming against her ribs. She lunges forward and tries to pull this _thing_ away, because it’s like sealing an open infected wound away from the air and she can feel him _rotting_ —

Her master reels away, his eyes shocked and dull and flat and dead, and under her touch the forsaken blight layered up over his existence withers and burns and the being underneath _breathes_. “Ahsoka, what are you doing!” Her master shouts, panic running rampant in his voice.

She grabs her master by the front of his tunic and refuses to let go, bearing her teeth and out of the corner of her eye she sees something like the heart of a sun—if the sun sliced as sharp as a light saber—ripping into the cancer leeching off of him. Blood and teeth and feathers and eternity spills out from beneath the open wounds. She can’t get her voice under control until It is gone, until It dissolves into ribbons and burns into ash and then nothing, and even when she can speak, her voice is shuddering and raw and terrified and _furious_.

“Never— _never_ do that again.” She demands, her face screwed up into a snarl. She can barely speak past the lump in her throat, past the revulsion still racing over her skin and twisting in her gut. “Never,” she repeats, before she steps away, her thoughts whirling and running wild.

Anakin is still staring at her, and she sees the cuts spilling out not-blood, not what she expects to be blood, but actual wounded life force. Injuries. Permanence. Her master isn’t supposed to be permanent. She _hurt_ him.

And she feels guilt. “I,” She whispers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I—“

Her master is still staring at her, his physical form carbonite-frozen, but _him_ , his self, is spread twenty miles in either direction, stretching and rolling and keening in pain and relief. Oceans of fire, miles of lightning, the sky itself raining feathers and gold, eyes blinking over every space available.

Several planets freeze in time for one trillionth of a second. Three million plants grow half an inch in the space between heartbeats. Every light saber crystal in the galaxy resonates with one word for the space of a single breath, but no jedi can understand what it means.

But a freedwoman from Tattooine can. _Unfettered_. It hums in the air for just a moment. The freedom runner in question is never quite the same. 

When Anakin finally speaks, his throat is croaky and quiet. “Okay, so maybe I stopped hiding for a reason.”

“You did that _consistently_?” Ahsoka actually wants to throw up. “Who let you do that?”

Her master shrugs. “I know it isn’t fun, but—“

Ahsoka shakes her head. “Nope. No ‘but’ about this. You are never, ever, ever doing that again.”

Anakin raises an eyebrow. “Snips, last time I checked, you were the padawan here.” He’s trying to reestablish equilibrium. Trying to be casual. Trying to ignore whatever just happened.

“How can you try and make this normal,” Ahsoka snaps.

It’s like a door just got shut in her face. Her master’s being compresses again until he’s occupying mostly one space. There’s such a sudden absence that it leaves her feeling cold. “I know what I am,” He replies, perfectly calm. Perfectly still.

“That’s not what I meant,” Ahsoka scrambles, because she knows how it sounds and she didn’t mean it that way.

“Sure, Snips.” Her master says. Whatever else he wanted to say is interrupted as the navicomputer jerks them out of hyperspace and Coruscant fills up the whole view port. The computer warbles a request for admission codes and her Master brushes past her and lists a string of numbers that will grant them admission.

The silence between them could fill an ocean, and he doesn’t look at her until he lands in the hangar, manually flying despite the fact that Artoo could have done it alone. When he finally catches her eye, his expression is drawn tight and his shadow is made of thorns and he murmurs, “Don’t look anyone in the eye. Keep your head down. Stay calm.”

She frowns, but she nods. When the hull opens, Anakin explodes.

At least it feels like he does.

He grows and vanishes wings in a hurricane of feathers and blood. His shadow blooms with roses and belladonna and molten metal. His very skin glows, almost as if his blood is on fire. Teeth rattle around inside his mouth and fall from his skin, and suns hang in the air around him.

He’s behaving like an exceptionally flamboyant peacock, and when Mace Windu lays sight on them, he winces and turns his eyes away. “Master Skywalker,” He says in greeting.

“Master Windu,” Anakin says amiably while doing the metaphysical equivalent of shining a floodlight directly into the eyes of an active council member. “I hope we aren’t late.” 

For all his faults, Ahsoka can never accuse him of being anything less than audacious.

Mace turns away and begins the trek to the council chamber. “We have younglings, Skywalker. You’re going to burn their eyes out.”

Her master winces, but he doesn't budge an inch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so hiding is reeeeeeeally bad for you. 10/10 would not recommend.


End file.
